If you've grown up in or near Cornwall, you've probably heard the tale of how the original name, Murderer's Creek, is attributed to an alleged massacre of some local settlers by a band of American Indians.

There's apparently no solid evidence to back up that legend. But true or not, lately the creek has been living up to its legendary reputation as a place of death.

In the past four years, three bodies have turned up in or near the creek. One was a confirmed drowning victim, one an apparent drowning and the third the victim of a still-unsolved slaying. That wasn't the first murder victim the creek has seen.

But none of that seems to have scared off the fishermen, kayakers and others who seek the creek out as a recreational spot.

So, does the Moodna — whose very name sounds like it comes from a spooky ghost story spun around a campfire — deserve its dark reputation?

Consider the original legend: The story goes that a family of settlers — named Stacy, according to one version, Martelair, according to another — lived on the banks of the creek a few hundred feet upstream from the river during the 1600s (or 1700s, again depending on which version you read). They lived in peace with their Indian neighbors, but others did not.

One day, an elderly Indian named Naoman told Mrs. Stacy (or Martelair) there was a plan afoot to massacre all the settlers in the area because of a land dispute. She promised not to reveal who told her of the plan. With her husband and two children, she tried to escape, but they were caught crossing the river.

The Indians demanded to know who the traitor was who warned the family to flee, but the wife refused to tell. Finally Naoman, apparently impressed by her loyalty, confessed. He was promptly executed, but his noble deed didn't save the family. They were slain, too.

Fascinating — but is it true?

Janet Dempsey, Cornwall's town historian, says it's "a nice story," but she's never seen any credible evidence to support it. Besides the variation in the family name, the tribe of Indians is never specified, and the narrative "never pins it down to a particular date" — all things that historians look for to validate tales and legends as history.

In the mid-19th century, when poet Nathaniel P. Willis lived in Cornwall, he decided Murderer's Creek was too unpleasant a name and gave the creek its present name, Moodna.

Even those who know the old legend don't consider the Moodna to be an inherently sinister place. Dempsey says it's a "very placid" spot and was an important transportation route for soldiers during the American Revolution.

Longley, who heard the story of Murderer's Creek from her grandfather when she was growing up, knows it could all be "just hearsay."

She, too, considers the creek a pleasant place. She runs her bait shop from a house right on the creek. The state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Orange County Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs regularly stock the creek with trout for those who fish it every year, and Longley's seen an increasing abundance of other wildlife along its banks in recent years — ducks, deer, even a ring-necked pheasant.

Still, the creek has seen its share of tragedy.

Probably the most notorious case was in 1935. Dorothy Sherwood, a 27-year-old former burlesque showgirl, put her 2-year-old son, Jimmie, in a baby carriage, walked the four miles from Newburgh to Moodna Creek, found a secluded spot off Caesar's Lane and, after Jimmie had played in the creek for about half an hour, she held his head under the water until he drowned.

Sherwood then hitched a ride back to Newburgh with a truck driver (whom she managed to convince that her son was only ill). Once back in the city, she walked into police headquarters and confessed. She called it a mercy killing: She told cops she did it because she was broke and could no longer provide for him.

Sherwood was sentenced to death, but was paroled after serving only a few years in prison.

Then there are the modern cases:

- June 28, 1993: Teenagers find the body of 38-year-old George Yagel of Cornwall floating in the creek. Police said he either jumped or slipped and fell into the creek while dodging a train that struck and killed his buddy, Anthony Miksinski, 40, also of Cornwall, while they were walking along the railroad tracks near the creek.

? July 11, 2000: Swimmers spot the body of 38-year-old Roma Barrs of Brooklyn floating in the Hudson River at the mouth of Moodna Creek. Cornwall police Sgt. Philip Sinagra said it was only last year she was identified, when the man she was with that day — who was now a suspect in an unrelated New York City homicide — told police she drowned and he didn't go in after her because he couldn't swim. An autopsy was inconclusive, and so far this case remains listed as an accidental drowning.

- March 19, 2001: A tourist from Texas spots the body of a man on the creek's bank near Route 32 in Cornwall. The man's face was disfigured and he had no hands. The cause of death remains undetermined. Police suspect he was killed somewhere else and dumped in the creek. It remains an unsolved homicide.

- April 21, 2004: A fisherman finds the body of 45-year-old Robert Wesner, a local man, in the creek east of Route 32 in Cornwall. An autopsy rules the cause of death was asphyxiation by drowning.

While it didn't happen right in the creek itself, the creek was repeatedly named as the nearest landmark in news stories after the skeletal remains of a woman were found at a Route 32 rest stop on Oct. 1, 1991. She was eventually identified as Mary Ellen DeLuca, from Long Island — a victim of notorious serial killer Joel Rifkin.

Others have had close calls. In July 1992, two teens rescued a father and son after the son fell in the creek and the father couldn't get him out. In July 1994, a woman had to be rescued after her foot got wedged in some rocks. In January 1996, a state police helicopter rescued a man and a boy who were clinging to a fallen tree trunk after their raft crashed and fell apart.

In certain parts of the Village of Washingtonville, the creek has periodically claimed not lives but homes by flooding its banks. When Tropical Storm Floyd came through the area in 1999, seven homes on Cardinal Drive were so badly damaged their owners were bought out by the federal government and the houses were torn down. Village Building Inspector Mark McKeon said nothing new can be built there, and those properties will remain green space.

But it seems no amount of death or destruction can discourage those who come to the Moodna to fish or swim or raft or just commune with nature.

Longley, alluding to the common belief that bad things happen in threes, speculates that maybe the Moodna's troubles are done for now.

"People fish along these banks all the time," Longley says, looking out her shop's door. "I don't think anybody's scared."

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